A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (56 page)

The least that can be said is that I was ahead of my time….

Jules Roy, 1960

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A Kind of Resurrection:
May 1958

The Conquest, Père Bugeaud, a hundred years of French administration, slipped over the immensity of Algeria like water on granite—but here, in France, for the first time, the stone crumbles and the water penetrates.

Germaine Tillion

The “thirteen conspiracies”

IN terms of the broad canvas of French affairs, the mad May days of 1958 seem to belong to a long past era: to the storming of the Bastille, to the revolutionary scenes of 1830 and 1848, to the tragi-comic extravaganzas of the Commune of 1871, rather than to contemporary history less than two decades old. The events in Portugal since April 1974 help make the sacking of the Gouvernement-Général office in Algiers, the invasion of Corsica, the threat of paras floating down on the French homeland itself, and the overthrow of the Fourth Republic all appear not quite so improbable as they might have done a few years previously. Yet still that final fortnight of May 1958 remains one of the most extraordinary and melodramatic interludes, intoxicated and intoxicating, that the modern European mind can recall, a work of the
romancier
rather than of the historian. Out of millions of words written about it, an immense confusion of acts, motives and men emerges. One of the best works of journalistic narration published at the time calls itself
Les 13 Complots du 13 Mai
, and thirteen may well be an understatement. All one can attempt to do here is to distil from this seething cauldron the ingredients that essentially affected the course of the Algerian war, or its principal participants. The events of May 1958 seem to have burst out of the centre of the Algerian conflict to determine its subsequent course. “They changed the spirit of the struggle in one camp, and made the other hold its breath,” says Philippe Tripier. For France, the coming of de Gaulle was, obviously, a critical turning-point in the war—as, indeed, it was to be on many other levels for the whole Western world. Though it was later to prove equally a turning-point for the F.L.N., its significance was not quite so clear-cut in the earliest phases; hence the ensuing pages concentrate on what was almost exclusively a French story.

The “Faure conspiracy” and the
affaire du bazooka
had already given a foretaste of the pressure of steam that the Algerian war was building up against the established authority of France. In November 1957 the thirty-five days without a government preceding Gaillard had shown the nation rising to greater heights of ungovernability at home and its prestige sinking to all-time depths abroad. From then on the plotting and counter-plotting had redoubled. The new period of parliamentary instability following the fall of Gaillard on 15 April had added a fresh fillip to the conspiracies, of which there were basically two kinds: those that were specifically for the return of General de Gaulle, and those that were not. Only the former knew precisely what, and whom, they wanted, but were disunited as to how and when. Among the many pro-Gaullists implicated to one extent or another, the following names stand to the fore: Jacques Soustelle, Michel Debré, Alexandre Sanguinetti, Maître Jean-Baptiste Biaggi, Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Léon Delbecque.

The Gaullists

Since his fervid send-off from Algiers in February 1956, Soustelle had become an impassioned protagonist of
Algérie française
and opponent of Lacoste’s
loi-cadre
reforms. Returning to politics as deputy for Lyon, he had arisen as the scourge of the Assembly, bringing down both Bourgès-Maunoury and Gaillard (and frightening even de Gaulle by some of his vehemence). In the course of the 15 April debate he had declared, “I am one of those who are determined to give away nothing more.”

Debré, whose name has already been mentioned in the context of the
affaire du bazooka
and who was to become de Gaulle’s first prime minister, had been senator for Indre-et-Loire since 1948. Immensely hard-working and persistent, at forty-six he was described by the Brombergers as “a rather severe man, discreet, with eyes of fire, nervous, always pacing up and down”. Neither the face nor the personality were particularly memorable, which made him the despair of the Parisian cartoonists. But Debré’s most outstanding characteristic was his “intransigent fidelity” to de Gaulle, which never wavered all through his career. De Gaulle himself recognised this quality, and in 1956 had remarked despondently, “I have confidence only in Debré.” Debré was unmistakably the
éminence grise
of all the various circles plotting the general’s return, and his activities were recognised to the extent that over the past two years he had been under constant surveillance by four plain-clothes policemen at his front door. In 1957 he had published a violent attack on the leaders of the Fourth Republic,
Ces Princes qui nous Gouvernent
, which he concluded with a pointedly relevant reference to the essential “legitimacy” of de Gaulle as a saviour waiting in the wings, on the basis that “He has represented honour, national interest, popular unity and law. His legitimacy mounts in direct proportion as that of the regime sinks….” The well-named
Courrier de la Colère
, which he had founded the same year, angrily drew comparisons between Louis XV’s abandonment of Canada and India and the present-day “sell-out” of the French Empire, and hammered away with such headlines as:

DE GAULLE

MEANS A FRENCH PEACE IN AFRICA

MEANS THE LOYAL ASSOCIATION BETWEEN

FRANCE AND ALL THE OVERSEAS PEOPLES

together with themes that were to become more familiar in later years, such as: MUST WE GIVE UP TOULON TO N.A.T.O.?

Sanguinetti was a
pied noir
born in Cairo, where his father had been an adviser to King Fouad; he was a rugged-looking individual who, as a commando sergeant during the Second World War, had lost a leg on Elba close to Napoleon’s house of exile. His main contribution to the Gaullist cause was to be secretary-general to C.A.N.A.C., the pressure group of the all-powerful
anciens combattants
associations, which in turn was closely linked with those in Algeria. In this context particularly, an invaluable go-between was provided in the roly-poly shape of the Corsican lawyer with the uncontrolled laugh, Jean-Baptiste Biaggi. Invariably described as “a born revolutionary”, Biaggi has already appeared in this story when whipping up antagonism to Mollet and Catroux during the ill-starred visit to Algiers in February 1956. To sympathetic ears Biaggi expounded, with perhaps more typically Corsican passion than legal reasoning, the view that the Fourth Republic could now claim no more legitimacy than Pétain’s Vichy in 1940. His eccentricity, his war record, but above all his extremism made him the darling of the Right in Algiers and helped open doors for the Gaullists to the
pied noir
veterans’ organisations that were hitherto predominantly Pétainist.

Biaggi was also responsible for winning over a key intermediary in Algiers who would prove indispensable to the Gaullists in the critical May days: Colonel Jean Thomazo, or “Nez-de-Cuir”. The colonel gained his nickname from an unsightly leather strap he wore across his face to hide where the bridge of his nose had been shot away at Cassino; an irrepressible fighter, Thomazo had refused to take time off from the battle for plastic surgery. Of his three sons, one had been killed in Indo-China, a second in the Aurès, and the third was to have a narrow escape in a flying accident in Algeria. Arriving in Algeria as chief-of-staff to Ducournau’s 25th Airborne Division, Thomazo had been transferred to command the Unités Territoriales (U.T.)[
1
] of part-time
pied noir
militiamen, with whose views he wholeheartedly identified himself. Tournoux describes him as being “fifty years old by civil status, a thousand by right of military service, but eighteen years old politically”. There was not an intrigue in Algiers into which he had not thrown himself with the total enthusiasm of a Dumas musketeer, and without any fear of compromising himself. He was immensely popular among all the various “ultra” circles in Algiers, and was also in close touch with the Commander-in-Chief, Raoul Salan. A true Bonapartist, his abiding belief was that the army should take over power, and he had been but lukewarm to de Gaulle until Biaggi had set to work on him.

Chaban-Delmas and the Delbecque “antenna”

In terms of the action to lead directly to de Gaulle’s return, the two most important figures were probably Jacques Chaban-Delmas and Léon Delbecque. Still only forty-three, Chaban-Delmas could look back on one of the most meteoric careers under Gaullism:
général-de-brigade
at twenty-nine (something almost unheard-of since Napoleon), mayor of Bordeaux at thirty-two and leader of the Republicains Sociaux Gaullists in the Assembly since 1953. Although appointed Minister of Defence under Gaillard’s government, Chaban-Delmas never made any secret of his working for the return of his old patron. He was a first-class tennis player and rugger enthusiast, with an excess of energy and enterprise. On his own initiative, and while still in the Gaillard cabinet, Chaban-Delmas had despatched Léon Delbecque to set up an “antenna”—or listening-post—in Algiers, thinly under cover of the Ministry of Defence. A self-made man from a working-class family in northern France, Delbecque was another who had made his name with the wartime Gaullist Resistance, and was now a Gaullist deputy. Between December 1957 and the early days of May 1958 he had made twenty-eight feverish trips back and forth between Paris and Algiers at the behest of Chaban-Delmas.

As indeed is the experience with most conspiracies, the moves to bring back de Gaulle were wrapped in a certain degree of amateurishness and uncertainty. There was one moment of
opéra bouffe
when the plump Biaggi and two other plotters were trapped in an antique Parisian lift between floors on their way to a top-level and secret meeting. The restless Debré, bounding up the stairs, was unable to find a mechanic to release them; so for an uncomfortable period the Gaullist
directoire
hung suspended in mid-air. As a result of telephone-tapping and normal Parisian indiscretion, the plotting seems to have gone by no means unobserved by the French authorities—such as they were in the absence of a government. At one point Delbecque toyed with the idea of some kind of army coup for the month of August 1958; because most of the Communist leaders and their cohorts would be away on holiday and it would be more difficult for them to mount a counter-coup. This seemed to show a curious insensitivity to the growing pressure of events. In February, shortly after the Sakiet incident, that outstanding African statesman and francophile, Houphouët-Boigny of the Ivory Coast, had come to de Gaulle himself to warn him that Black Africa was on the verge of revolt. Only de Gaulle could restore confidence there. The fall of Gaillard had further precipitated matters, with a deluge of letters and suppliants to the Elysée daily demanding the return of de Gaulle. By the end of April the Delbecque “antenna” had succeeded in establishing a
comité de vigilance
in Algiers. It was the aim of Chaban-Delmas that, when the day came, this should be transformed into a Committee of Public Safety—the deadly words already dropped by Soustelle in the Assembly in March—to take over in Algeria and bring back de Gaulle.

Through the helpful bridging operations of Nez-de-Cuir, a certain harmony had been created with the various militant
pied noir
organisations in Algiers; even though the words they were singing might have differed. On 26 April they had jointly mounted a successful and massive demonstration at that nerve-centre of Algiers’ emotions, the
monument aux morts
. The immediate excuse was the attempt, in Paris, by the Alsatian Pierre Pflimlin to form a government in place of Gaillard, the organisers having persuaded themselves and the multitude that Pflimlin was a
bradeur
intent on “doing a deal” with the F.L.N. 30,000 people turned out, among them a number of Muslims for the first time. There were slogans of “The Army to Power” and calls for a committee of public safety, but any mention of the name de Gaulle was deliberately repressed by Delbecque. At one moment it looked menacingly as if the tide of demonstrators might swamp the nearby Gouvernement-Général, and as things were to turn out the day was to prove to be a dummy-run for 13 May. On the evening of the 26th Delbecque was able to report back to Chaban-Delmas: “I now have Algiers in my hand!”

“The Group of Seven”: Lagaillarde

Apart from Alain de Sérigny, the editor of the powerful and fulminant
Écho d’Alger
, who was already in close contact with Soustelle, Delbecque’s principal allies in Algiers that day had centred around a newly formed body called “The Group of Seven”. Created in March, the “Seven” represented a fusion of “ultra” bodies and names—some of them with a distinctly fascist tinge—that had already been seen at the time of the anti-Mollet demonstrations of 1956, with one important addition. Among them was Robert Martel, the leader from the Mitidja and head of U.F.N.A. (Union Française Nord-Africaine) who had been arrested, and then released, on charges of involvement with a counter-terrorist group. There was Jo Ortiz, the restaurateur, Poujadist and admirer of Charles Maurras, the Fascist Action Française leader of the 1930s given a life sentence as a collaborator in 1945; and there was Dr Bernard Lefèvre, another Poujadist and admirer of Portugal’s Salazar. But first and foremost there was the new and violent figure of the student leader, Pierre Lagaillarde, who would, however briefly, perform a key role on 13 May and again in the stormy January of two years later.